If you manage people remotely, what are some issues you deal with?

Dhruv Bhatia
13 replies

Replies

Yuliia Mamonov 🇺🇦
I think sometimes I can feel how the team is slightly losing the sense of accountability because I somehow turn from a real person into a text on Skype, Slack, or whatever tool you use. So, we've moved to more frequent meetings in-person to fix that.
Dhruv Bhatia
@yulia_mamonova interesting...have in-person meetings solved this for you? Does your team experience fatigue due to the increase in meetings?
Yuliia Mamonov 🇺🇦
@dhruv_bhatia since we're a remote team, we don't have that many in-person meetings. So, it's definitely not overwhelming :)
Andrey
Lack of personal contact at some point may have a bad influence on the quality of a remote team. Working from an office is better. But if that's not an option, try to do some remote team building -- video calls, a common chat group for sharing geek jokes and news.
Dhruv Bhatia
@andrey_mi true, the "Friday" chill vibe that exists in offices is kind of missing with remote work...
Dragos Bulugean
They sometimes get lazy, and you have to keep a strong connection with them and remind them of the goals that we have.
Morten Jaeger
Time-zones. Working with developers all around the world has made launching and feedback sessions more difficult than they would have been otherwise. At times it's also significantly increased development time. Sometimes we've had to make compromises and meet in the middle, otherwise, we would always have a 12-hour delay from feedback to fixes.
Helene Auramo
Great discussion here! I think the biggest challenge is regarding energies. :) If you work together in a physical space, the positive energy can move easier from one person to another and the bad moods/energies can change to good ones if other people are energized. If you are at home you are totally responsible for your own energies and if you are in a bad/sad mood, you can easily have that feeling for the whole day without doing something about it. This would have never worked so at the office. However I have found many ways to cope with this: mediatation, walks in the nature, music etc. Those can have a huge impact on the positive energies. But also as a leader, I need to understand this and support my team if they need the support in coping with their energies. At Prönö, we use different tools (such as Slack, Miro etc.) and have daily check-up meetings online. I think we have been more productive after the first lock-down than before. But the energies is the thing I worry the most.
Dhruv Bhatia
@helene_auramo very insightful! I struggle with the mood / motivation issue quite frequently and it is hard to go from being negative to positive as compared to in an office.